


i found peace in your violence

by allieteration



Category: Choices: Bloodbound (Visual Novel)
Genre: Bloodbound: Book One, Choices, Choices: Stories You Play - Freeform, F/M, Pixelberry - Freeform, Playchoices - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, bloodbound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 18:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15346020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allieteration/pseuds/allieteration
Summary: a long-form drabble in which you and jax matsuo are lost beneath the dilapidated rubble of ruling a clanless empire…one that is presumed hopeless by new york city’s vampire council.  together, you learn that there is peace within one another in spite of the haunting violence and injustice you face each day.





	i found peace in your violence

**Author's Note:**

> in this snapshot of jax matsuo from choices: stories you play by pixelberry’s bloodthirsty series, bloodbound, and mc’s (aka “you”) relationship, the twosome is “lost beneath the dilapidated rubble of ruling a clanless empire…one that is presumed hopeless by the vampire council. together, you learn that there is peace within one another in spite of the haunting violence you face each day”. not to mention that jax is, ultimately, a badass.
> 
> i found peace in your violence defies recent works of mine as a long-form piece, but is kindred in its heart that i devoted into its entangled ribbons of words. this is, naturally, with acknowledgement to the playchoices team for developing a dynamic character and love interest for mc in a wickedly superhuman visual novel.
> 
> please, don’t hesitate to leave a kudos and/or comment! constructive criticism is always welcome, too. enjoy!

a fog of forest trees spider out into the nightfall around you, viridescent moss devouring their sandpaper bark. the greenwood soil is swallowed by raindrops from a thundershower, the mud fusing to the soles of your leather boots. the air is humid, suffocating you like a cable noose. you’re besieged by the aroma of decaying flesh, a refrain of sharpened, yet deteriorating sets of teeth grinding together with bloodthirsty snarls bubbling up transparent throats. clutched in your hand is a makeshift wooden stake, slivers puncturing your palm and fingertips from your fierce grip. your brow is furrowed in concentration as the beasts prey upon you, your adrenaline pulsating through every crevice of your framework, your heart _tha-thumping_ to the rhythm of his swords decapitating and julienning heads. as a fiend closes in on you, you ready your weapon, contending in a duel of humanism versus savagery. it pounces, and you instinctively thrust the spike through its brittle ribcage, explosive charcoal ash pigmenting the air environing you. you dash over to him, evading the barbarians that remain, and with your breath heaving, you exclaim, “there’s too many of them, jax! we have to get out of here, find a safe house to hole up in – jesus christ, _something_!” you glance over your sweating shoulder, eyes widening as a flock encroaches in on you, chapped muzzles frothing for a feast with you as the centerpiece.

“we can handle it,” jax affirms, even-tempered with vision locked on his next victim like a crackerjack sniper’s scope.

“ _handle it?_ are you trying to get yourself killed? they’re surrounding us!” you screech above the pandemonium, incredulous, eyes wild.

“watch my six,” jax orders forthrightly, and, his posture upright and intimidating, he crosses his blades, staring down the ferals dauntlessly.

“ _jax!_ what the fu—” you interrupt yourself, slapping your hand on your forehead exasperatedly. you heave a breath, and follow suit behind him in spite of your clamorous intuition alarmingly insisting against it.

your twosome assaults the herd of opponents with trained agility, their powdery carcasses mushroom-clouding around you, inducing your measure of coughing fits. your hearing is engulfed by the piercing howls of ferals being exterminated around you. jax neutralizes the last standing brute, and hurtles over to you, who’s keeled over and hacking.

“well, this is embarrassing,” you redden as you straighten after a concluding cough, your lungs cleared of the noxious inhalation, with ax massaging your back soothingly. his hand is outstretched, sizable and calloused, and you shudder at his touch.

“it’s nothing to blush about…although, you’re cute with pink in your cheeks,” he smirks, stroking the side of your face. you gaze at him endearingly—until you recall his foolhardy fray tactics. you swat his hand away, your expression contorting into aggravation and displeasure.

“don’t smooth talk me to get out of whatever the hell happened back there,” you retort, arms indignantly crossed over your t-shirt, which is tattered from razor-edged talons. “seriously, are you on a kamikaze mission i don’t know about?”

“i had to finish the job. you can’t damn me for that,” he counters defensively, detaching from the honeyed moment once before.

“uh, when your _life_ is hanging in the balance, i sure as shit can,” you snap back, until soon your face softens into a tenderheartedness. “what’s up with you, jax?”

he stares at you momentarily, his eyes professing something his lips cannot, until he eventually fractures your shared gaze, averting his twilight irises elsewhere, “let’s get back to the shadow den. we’re not safe here.”

you relent, dispiritedness washing over your face like a moonlit tide, and amble through the eerily spine-chilling greenwood behind him, your musings swallowed by disquietude and bewilderment.

                   ☾✧ ☾✧ ☾✧ ☾

you’ve clambered into the shadow den through the hole-and-corner passageway, warmly greeted by your newfangled friendships like a fireplace on a winter’s eve. with a waning grin, arnold northmun hastens toward you, his intuition escorting him, for he discerns a predicament.

“everything alright, kids?” he inquires, tiger tattoo gleaming beneath the shadow den’s lighting, albeit lackluster, and boring through you with its lifelike ferocity.

“we, uh—we ran into some trouble. we’re fine, though, arnold. thanks for checking in,” you eye jax in your peripheral line of sight as you reply, your heartening smile conspicuously artificial. you were never adept at masking your feelings like an dignified masquerade ball. arnold takes notice of this, muscles fraught with your fickleness, the tiger now overextended, teeth bared.

“well, it’s no problem; i’m glad you two are in one piece,” arnold nods, unassured, but ultimately accepting of your endeavor to put his mind at ease. “lula’s been asking about you, by the way. she thinks storytime is an everyday occurrence now,” mouth twitching upward into a chuckle, enlivening the atmosphere.

“i will absolutely find her and make some time to spend with her,” you chortle half-heartedly, yet your stomach sizzles with jubilation that lula has become attached to you. you recount early evenings tucked away in the restful library, a corner occupied by yourself with lula nestled into your lap, the tales of heroes and villains swarming your thoughts like bumblebees in a nest.

you sway your head around to invite jax into the conversation—but he’s vanished, the only sight being of a spirited citizen strumming along on their acoustic guitar atop a turned-over bucket. “hey, this is a random question, but…have you noticed anything… _off_ with jax lately?”

“you mean that he’s turned into a murderous, feral-terminating machine?” arnold raises an eyebrow, tucking his arms into his built chest.

his bluntness startles you, but you sputter out, “something like that,” shifting your weight uncomfortably, hands grasping the opposite shoulder as if a gentle autumnal wind has gallivanted through the shadow den.

“listen, i’ve known jax for awhile. he gets into these, erm— _angsty_ bouts of behavior. he always bounces back, though,” he vows, although his eyes flicker with a plague of consternation that imperils an apocalypse.

“should i talk to him?” you pose the question, voice diminished to mutter. you feel a tautness in your throat, your eyes welling with teardrops that you promptly absorb as rapidly as they surface.

“you _do_ have a special way with him. it might be worth your time,” arnold endorses, bobbing his head in assent.

he departs with a final fragment to your harlequin kaleidoscope, squeezing your shoulder as you unhand your palms from your shoulders in defeat, “remember, kid: we’re different than you. we see the world as a predator out to get us. it’s sad, but it’s our reality. your’s is a cushy chair next to adrian and kamilah.”

you yearn to refute arnold’s assessment of you, unhinging your lips for a rejoinder, but then you overhear it—your blood, undulating through your crisscross veins like a waterpark slide in a blistering july heatwave. your _human_ blood. as he saunters away to tend to his duties, you curl your fingertips into your sternum, the proximity between your pitter-pattering heart and your hands too distant. nevertheless, you stand there amongst the hustle and bustle of the market square, the clanless flagging down one another with the ambition of making a dime that dewy daybreak. your flitter your eyes around at the livelihood of the ideology you are fated to safeguard and uphold, and you realize that they are not solely clanless, not solely vampires. they are first and foremost _people_ with likes and dislikes, skillfulness and blunders, love and hatred. the clanless cause is predestined for victory with their mammoth fleet, that you understand, but you had never _really_ acknowledged that you yourself are a clanless; an outcast of societal expectations. you sympathize now more than ever before with this location you have come to call home. with that, you trek to jax’s quarters, your blood simmering with purpose.

                   ☾✧ ☾✧ ☾✧ ☾

“knock knock,” you croak out, lead-footed as you swing the cumbersome oak door to an open stance. “can i, erm…can i come in?”

jax is perched atop the moth-eaten mattress upon his bedroom flooring, a soundless film of his elbows buttressed on his knees, his elongated fingers dangling, his head in downward dog. you wrench a cherrywood chair from underneath the matching table and face across from him. the pale salt lamp glow illuminates the side of his high-rise cheekbones and sable hair like that of a blackened rosebud. the fragrance of herbs flutters like a sapphire butterfly, your stomach suddenly ravenous for nourishment. you’re leering at the elfin kitchen when jax interjects with a murmur, “i’ve got freshly-made bread from minnie.”

“isn’t she the elderly lady with the glasses that belong in a party city?” you wisecrack, mouth watering at a reverie of toasted bread with a puddle of melted butter smothered across the crumby top.

jax’s body jars upward as he snorts, a lukewarm, lopsided smile plastered onto his pillowy, rosy lips, “that’s the one. for what it’s worth, her mind isn’t all there; she’s been through a lot as a clanless, to say the least. she means well, though. every morning, she passes breakfast out to as many residents as she can.”

“that’s sweet,” you twinkle, neatening a strand of your chestnut tresses behind your ear ornamented with glistening pearls. “i don’t know many people like that left in the world.”

“neither do i…” he trails off, voice raspy in its hushedness. “well…i know _one_ person.”

you simper, glimpsing at him through your eyelashes. the pair of you are tight-lipped for what feels to be hours of everlasting, palpable restlessness. you scuttle over to the woven bread basket, delicately snatching two lathered rolls, taking one for yourself and you passing along the second to jax. as you are gathering yourself to splinter the tension, he abruptly thrums, “i can’t let them live like that.”

“what do you mean? who?” you ask, leaning in closer, mystified by what he’s professed.

“the clanless. watching what they are…those monsters…compared to what they could’ve been…” he trails off, an inky silhouette of macabre thoughts nightmarishly befallen into a gruesome past. a glint of steeliness refracts in his eyes, his muscles rigid with woe for those who didn’t last through nightfall.

“jax,” you clamber off of your tumbledown seat and onto the cot beside him, steadfast in the solace you aim to bring to his anguish. “you’re one person. you were never meant to bear this burden alone.”

for a long, unbearable moment, jax stares at you, poker-faced, his body language indecipherable. the sole noise amidst his domicile is the glister and snap, like a polaroid lens, of unscented wax candles. he strains to reply, but is left with an unwavering torrent of tearfulness. unexpectedly, he collapses into you like origami folds, his weeping heart-rending. _i love him_ , you think; _i will love him into battlefield victory and defeat; i will love him through peace and through violence._

you softheartedly knead his back in cyclone circles, hungering for a harmonious solution for the clanless peoples; for the ferals; for the council. you bear a heaviness that even atlas doesn’t envy you for—yet here, now, with jax in your company, you feel a steadiness that is so vigorous it’s foreign in nature. you lift jax’s chin with your forefinger, polishing his skin from the droplets with your opposite hand, and whisper lovingly, “you’re a _superhero_ , jax matsuo. nobody could ever do what you do and do it as extraordinarily as you.”

he flushes a fiery, sweet-toothed cherry red that you haven’t witnessed before. with a deep-rooted exhale, he inquires, “how about that bread?”

with that, the pair of you settle into one another, noshing on delectable dough, sharing an unbothered moment of intimacy whilst outside, your work is only beginning.


End file.
